Carlos Moedas says teams in Lisbon are “greatly prepared” for seismic risk.

On Tuesday, the mayor of Lisbon explained that the city’s “excellent preparation” for seismic risk is due to the civil protection teams, firefighters and engineers that the Portuguese capital needs to respond to natural disasters.

“Regarding earthquakes, my statement is due to the excellent training of our civil protection team, the excellent training of our firefighters and the excellent training of our engineers,” Carlos Moedas (PSD) said after being questioned at a meeting of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly by PEV and PAN deputies on the seismic risk statement in the city.

On Wednesday, the mayor of Lisbon said the Portuguese capital was “extremely prepared” for the possibility of an earthquake like the one that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday, including the tsunami warning system.

“I would like to assure you that Lisbon has prepared for potential earthquakes and we all know that we live in an area of ​​the country where these earthquakes can occur. As a civil engineer and as a person who has worked in this field, our city is extremely prepared after the 1980s, unfortunately not in the oldest areas, but very, very prepared in terms of design and construction,” stated Carlos Moedas (SDP) on Wednesday at a decentralized public meeting. cameras.

At Tuesday’s assembly session, the mayor of the SDP tried to clarify his statements, saying that “often they are completely taken out of context.”

“My statements were about very simple points about our training, and I repeat: we have the best fire brigades in the world, and this is proven and proven, and I leave here a tribute to what they are doing in Syria and in Turkey. We have an exemplary civil protection service, and what we experienced during the flood allows me to say that we are very well prepared,” he said.

As a civil engineer, Carlos Moedas emphasized that his experience allows him to claim that construction in new areas of the city is “fully prepared”, confirming that there are “excellent seismological engineers” in the country.

“The state of our seismic engineering, our standards in terms of seismic engineering are not comparable with what is happening, for example, in Turkey or Syria, and in this sense we are very well prepared. catastrophes, and we must always prepare for this,” the mayor stressed.

The Lisbon Municipality has already distributed more than 1,000 “kits” to schools and is implementing a municipal program to improve the seismic resistance of private and municipal buildings and municipal urban infrastructure called ReSist.

“We have excellent services, we have excellent training, but this is a permanent job,” the mayor said, adding that in the city center, namely in historical areas, “there is not enough seismic survey” because these are very old buildings. .

Urban Advisor Joana Almeida (independently elected by the Novos Tempos Coalition – PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança) said that building seismic vulnerability reports “will start to be provided once the architecture is approved”, as a risk mitigation measure, pointing out that the council, together with the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), is conducting a study analyzing 100 buildings, namely 50 residential and 50 public buildings, from different periods of construction, in order to obtain results from June.

“From here, draw conclusions about the vulnerability of buildings depending on the timing of their construction and the quality of materials,” the urban adviser said, stating that “all buildings built before 1958 have greater seismic vulnerability from the very beginning than buildings with other new construction materials”.

As part of the ReSist program, sustainability sheets for buildings in Lisbon are prepared in-house. The Chamber is also developing, together with IST, a matrix for assessing the seismic resistance of buildings, information about which will be included in the stability sheets. In addition, a city building vulnerability map is being prepared with IST, 100 technicians are being trained, and 100 municipal buildings are being inspected.